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August 02, 2005
A second look at The Sun
Yesterday I mentioned in passing an opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun about Chief Justice Rehnquist. I had a bad link for it, which I have now corrected. But the article deserves a blog entry of its own anyway.
Rehnquist's views argue for his removal, the opinion piece by University of Maryland law school prof Mark A. Graber which ran on Sunday, is the only article I've ever seen in the "mainstream press" (as we in the disability movement call it) that notes the horrid irony of a Supreme Court Justice who has cancer -- and remains employed, even with the disease -- ruling that the University of Alabama, a state institution, was within its right when it let go one of its professors because she had cancer. That person was Patricia Garrett, and the Garrett case is of course a landmark ruling limiting the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Yeah, I'm still talking about the ADA. Sorry. )
Graber writes,
In that 5-4 decision in 2001, Justice Rehnquist asserted that states should never be forced to make any concession to the special needs of the ill when doing so might interfere in any way with the routine functions of state bureaucracies. "It would be entirely rational (and therefore constitutional)," he wrote, "for a state employer to conserve scarce financial resources by hiring employees who are able to use existing facilities."
In an email, Graber told me he wrote the piece because " I was tired of all the goodwill for Rehnquist and decided to vent a bit."
It shouldn't be that the disability rights aspects of public issues (the public issue in this case being the should-he-go, should-he-stay debate about Rehnquist) are so rarely aired that the presence of such an airing is cause for celebration. Nevertheless, I'll take my celebrating anywhere I can get it.
COMMENT-AUTHOR:Meadowlark's Mind
COMMENT-DATE:8/04/2005
COMMENT-BODY:Great work--I so glad you have decided to blog! Your insights are brilliant and most entertaining. I just found you blog and have skimmed it--I did take time to read your entry on Muder Ball, you have almost convinced me to give it a try. I tend to think it quads with sever Para envy but I'll have to check it out. Thanks
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Posted by mjohnson at August 2, 2005 05:42 PM